Elegant Evenings and Community Cleanings: A Didsbury Volunteer's Week
LAST THURSDAY EVENING - GUESTS OF THE DIDSBURY HOUSE HOTEL
On behalf of the Friends of Didsbury Park I would like to publicly thank Jess and Jen for very generously inviting us all to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the opening of the Didsbury House Hotel with them last Thursday.
In a beautiful boutique hotel setting we enjoyed a very special welcome, exquisite food, live music, champagne and canapes upon arrival and wine a-plenty throughout the evening. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and a very special occasion for all of us who were there.
Thank you so much for inviting us to have a lovely evening with you in your beautiful hotel.
TODAY
We came back down to earth today, when we had to put our best clothes away and don our working clothes and hi-vis vests once again. However we were compensated somewhat because we had a lovely morning with blue skies and sunshine throughout and all 25 volunteers were very appreciative of this improvement in the weather compared with the deluge last week.
It was great to see two familiar faces joining us again this morning. We were all very pleased to welcome Roger and Grace back with us once again and we were also joined by Tony, our Park Ranger from MCC, who did some great work applying cold tarmac to potholes by the Gillbrook Road entrance and also along the path next to the repaired section of the Flower Walk wall (see later). Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY - DONATIONS OF EUPHORBIA AND CHRYSANTHEMUMS
We had a large donation of euphorbia plants donated by Anne this morning which she had generously brought from her own garden. Thank you Anne. These were all carefully planted by Anne and Lis at the Wilmslow Road entrance. Picture 1 shows Lis (standing and proudly wearing a Welsh rugby scarf after Wales defeated Australia in the Rugby World Cup last night). Anne is on her knees part way through the planting and the owl is looking on! Later, after coffee, Lis and Anne were joined by Leslie to finish off the planting. Thank you all - these new additions look great.
We also had a second planting team of Sandra, Jude and Wendy today. Sandra, Jude and Wendy collected the remainder of the healthy looking chrysanthemums, donated last week by the supermarket surplus distribution charity in Trafford Park, and they planted them in the roundabout flower bed. Some of the chrysanthemums are about to flower and have already provided a lovely abundance of colour to this flower bed. Thank you Sandra, Jude and Wendy.
TODAY - PATH TO THE WILMSLOW ROAD GATE
In preparation for the installation of additional kick fencing along the path to the Wilmslow Road gate, Dan and Ian worked hard today to prune back much of the shruberry along the line where the new kick fencing will be installed. Thank you guys this was a great job. Picture 2 shows Lis (without scarf) and Dan at the top of the path. Lis is collecting water for the euphorbia and Dan is about to prune the shrub on his right. Thank you Ian and Dan for this preparatory work.
TODAY - THE WORK ON THE DANGEROUS PATH
Due to the atrocious weather conditions last week, the 'heavy gang' of Carl N, Adrian and Greg, had to rework some of last weeks edging tile installations as part of their initial work today. However I am delighted to report that this was soon undertaken and the installation of further edging tiles was successfully continued.
Picture 3 shows Adrian and Greg working in the sunshine. Meanwhile Tony also began working on laying cold tarmac to make the path safe wherever the edging tiles had been successfully installed. Thanks everyone. This was great team work! This will look excellent and it will be safe when it is all finished.
TODAY - ROGER AND TRISTAN
Picture 4 shows Roger and Tristan working together on the flower bed next to the Bird Garden. The flower bed was not only weeded but it was also topped up with the few remaining heathers left over from planting last week. Thank you guys and welcome back Roger.
TODAY - TOPPING UP THE DOGGY BAG DISPENSERS
It was great to see the old partnership of Gill N and Grace working together again today as they refilled all the doggy bag dispensers at each of the 5 entrances to the park and at the same time also updated the lecterns with posters. Thank you Gill and Grace and welcome back, Grace.
TODAY - GILLBROOK ROAD TEAM
The Gillbrook Road entrance team of Brenda, David and Allan were also supplemented today by Tony, our Park Ranger. Brenda, David and Allan cleared up all the paths from the Didsbury Neighbourhood Centre to the roundabout and Tony did some running path repairs on deteriorating paving around the entrance gate. Thank you all. This area looked great by the end of the morning. Picture 5 shows David, Brenda and Tony posing for a picture by the Gillbrook Road gate.
TODAY - WILD FLOWER MEADOW
Following the start made by the volunteers from AutoTrader earlier this month we put a large team on the wild flower meadow this morning to continue strimming back this years growth. Ilma, Kevin, Julie and Lucy focussed upon removing the large weeds such as docks whilst Sandra and I conducted the experiment of using the sit-on mower, on the highest cut setting to cut down the mainly wild grass area in the extended section of the meadow. Overall this worked well although it did involve Sandra, myself and Allan working well into the afternoon to complete this difficult task. Thank you to everybody involved. This has been a good start.
Picture 6 shows Lucy and Ilma in amongst the docks and Picture 7 shows Sandra concentrating on mowing the long grasses with Lucy, Julie and Ilma in the background.
TODAY - BREAKFAST CLUB
It was good to see Will in the park first thing this morning, replenishing his stock of litter picking bags. Well done Will. The other good news today is that Jude has now joined the growing band of our volunteers who have their own litter pickers and use them regularly especially when out walking their dogs. Welcome to the team Jude!
WEEKEND - POPPY PATH
The excellent news I heard over the weekend is that both Tom W and John are both fit again and have started to work again on the Poppy Path. Welcome back guys!
CURRY NIGHT NUMBERS
Whenever I ask volunteers or members individually if anybody is interested in a curry night on Thursday 23rd November I invariably receive a very positive response. However so far, I have only 14 names on my list of people who might be interested.
So at the moment I cannot really gauge if lots of people are up for it but with everything else going on our busy lives it is a case of just not getting around to letting me know or whether we should drop this idea and concentrate on organising something next year to coincide with achieving the 40,000 hours of volunteering milestone? So this is a sort of last call ......can you have a think and let me know if you might be interested?
LOOKING AHEAD - GOOD NEWS
I was informed last week that, weather permitting, the builders who repaired the section of the Flower Walk wall, will be returning on Friday (29th) this week to build a small wall around the metal bench.
Thank you once again for your fantastic support.